Hunter and Chekwe left before dawn, Chekwe in the lead, his silver eyes picking a way through fir groves and around rocky outcrops and bog fringes. The sun came up, cheery and golden in a spring sky strewn with billowing clouds. By midmorning, clumps of snow were plopping off trees and rivulets of snowmelt merged into streams, and streams rushed together to form freshets in the valleys. Hunter took the lead as they splashed knee-deep through icy water coursing through a dell and passed a cabin where a fur trapper stood agog in his doorway.
“You don’t want to go that way!” the trapper yelled after them.
“Hell yes, we do,” Hunter muttered. He slowed to a walk for a long uphill climb, then broke back into a trot for a long downhill burst of speed. It wasn’t difficult to follow the way. Ther
